Unrelated photo of Willa finishing her puzzle. She is moving onto more difficult puzzles, gets easily frustrated, and hates for anyone to help her. It's a bit wearing to have her yell and not accept help, but I suppose it makes success all the sweeter.
When Willa got her new prescription back during the summer, we returned to the doctor in September to make sure it was working. Well, the bad eye wasn't straightening quite as much as it needed to, so we decided to watch it closely and come back for another appointment in four months. We went back in January and the eye was even worse. This wasn't surprising, since Ryan and I both felt like we could see at home that it was a little off. The doctor thinks she might need bifocals, but first she wanted to try to get a better look at the eyes and maybe get a stronger prescription.
In order to do this, she would need to get a super strong dilation in the eyes. So, the doctor perscribed these really strong eye drops. We have to do the drops three times a day for three days before our next appointment. As you can imagine, dilating the eyes just once at the doctor's office was bad enough, but now we have to do it at home, three times a day for three days!! We started the drops today and I just feel badly for her. Besides the unpleasantness of the eye drops, she has all the effects of dilated eyes - she can't focus up close, it's often too bright for her. It just makes me so sad for her. The effects might last up to two weeks after we stop the drops!
She has been a trooper, but the drops still scare her a lot. I had a brilliant idea this morning as we were getting ready to do the first drops. I had a Sofia nightgown and shoes that I had bought on clearance. Sometimes if I find a good deal on something, I will get it and just hide it away until the right time (birthday, job chart prize, etc). I got those out and I made her a special sticker chart with ten boxes, which is the number of times we have to do the drops. We explained the chart for her and the brought out the nightgown and shoes for her to look at. I'm keeping them out so she can see them to help her focus on her goal. She gets to put a sticker on after each time we do the drops and we count down to how many boxes are left. We also watched this clip from Elmo's World about the eye doctor. June was watching it earlier this week and I think it was a tender mercy that I noticed it. We watched it about three times with Willa and commented on all the same things she does at the eye doctor, including the eye drops. I think it really helped her and calmed her down to go through it like that. One day down, two to go!
Proud of you both. That was a clever reward plan!!!!
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